(Herald rating: * * )
Miriam used to write Mills & Boon novels until she spat the dummy when they said her stories were too raunchy. Miriam was only 84 at the time. She was a wonderful writer.
It's the two-hanky weepies like this, by Nicholas Sparks, that give romance novels
a bad name.
James Garner and Gena Rowlands play a pair of old dears who recall past loves through a fog of Alzheimer's. Garner, living in a rest home, reads Rowlands the story of two lovers, Noah (Ryan Gosling) and Allie (Rachel McAdams).
It's North Carolina in the 1940s. He's a po' white boy who loves to read Walt Whitman's poetry; she's a society girl, and oh, you sussed it, her rich mum and dad don't approve.
There will be tears, there will be heartache, there will be a war, letters will never get to the people they're meant to. Many women will like this. Miriam was too sensible to have been one of them.
The DVD features include much praise of the director, Nick Cassavetes, son of (and not a patch on) John Cassavetes, one of the great indie film-makers; Sparks, all the people who made the film what it is, like designers, hair and makeup and costume people. The wry among us may be amused to note the 12 deleted scenes, a fairly graphic love grapple that would not have gone down well in the blue states of Middle America (bet Miriam would have kept it in) and an alternate ending.
